IDC forecasts that the Big Data technology and services market will grow at a 27 percent compound annual growth rate to $32.4 billion by the end of 2017. IDC points out that is six times the growth rate of the overall information and communication technology market.

IBM won’t say how much Watson adds to its bottom line. Watson is IBM’s Business Analytics business unit that includes cloud and mobile services that generated $17 billion last year. In 2013, Ginni Rometty, IBM’s CEO, said she expected Watson to generate $1 billion in revenue by 2018 and $10 billion by 2023.

Cognitive solutions, however are a harder sell to IBM business partner customers. “With Watson the outcomes are not 100 percent verifiable. And customers want to know what level of confidence they can trust in outcomes before making big investments,” Drew said.  

There are also challenges such as pricing. “How do you price a solution for something that has never been priced before,” Drew said referring to the cognitive solution versus traditional business intelligence solutions.

Watson’s own Gold said pricing for its packaged Watson offering are a moving target depending on the application.

“Will Watson Ecology be a big book of business for us? I can’t see it happening soon. But the Watson opportunity – from healthcare, insurance, to financial services – does seem very promising as Big Data becomes a bigger part of our customers’ needs,” said Tom Hughes, director of alliances at Greenwood Village, Colo.-based solution provider Technology Solutions Group at Ciber.

Hughes said what IBM needs to do is elevate awareness around Watson inside the partner community but more importantly within the verticals it sees the most promising growth.

“Anytime you have to educate the marketplace you have a problem,” Hughes said. “IBM needs to do a lot more than it’s doing right now to raise the subject matter expertise among partners before we are comfortable talking to our customers about Watson solutions,” he said.

For now, partners say Watson may have been ready for prime time for its big Jeopardy moment in the spotlight, but it’s not ready for channel partner prime time business.